An Interview

June 27, 1999|By MIKE HOLTZCLAW Daily Press

For 28 years, Victoria Wyndham played Rachel Cory on "Another World." Of Rachel's many loves, perhaps the greatest was Carl Hutchins, played by Charles Keating, who had been written out of the show but returned at the end. This spring, just a few weeks after learning that "Another World" had been canceled, Wyndham and Keating visited Christopher Newport University to do a performance of their two- person stage show. Still bitter about the show's demise, they spoke with Daily Press reporter Mike Holtzclaw about the show and its legacy.

DP: No matter how long a show has been on the air, the principle is still that all things eventually come to an end. Did you see this coming?

WYNDHAM: Well, you always hope that it's not going to happen, but at least for me personally, the writing seemed to be on the wall. NBC hasn't wanted this show for quite some time, and they made that very clear to a lot of us.

DP: When you look back on your years with the show, do you have a particular favorite moment that your character was a part of?

WYNDHAM: No, not really. Too many moments. Twenty-eight years is a little too much memory to boil down into one specific moment. That's most of my adult life. That's like saying, What one moment in your whole life do you remember best? There isn't just one. Thousands of memories. Thousands of very sweet precious moments, with a great deal of frustration. It's just like life.

KEATING: That's exactly right. It's been far too much time to single out one moment or one scene as your favorite. It just can't be done. It wouldn't be fair.

DP: A show that has been on that long has obviously touched millions and millions of people. "Another World" broke a lot of new ground for daytime TV, had a lot of "firsts." How do you think the show will be remembered by its fans?

KEATING: They'll be (mad) at NBC for canceling what they call "their show."

WYNDHAM: That is the legacy, I believe. One of the legacies is going to be the fact that the fans will be less complacent about shows they love. And the networks will be a little less quick to ignore the passionate fans in a marketplace where they're going to be looking back at 3 million viewers and wishing they still had them. That's what it will be in another couple of years, but you can't make people see ahead if they don't want to.

KEATING: It brings up another fundamental thing, and I say this as a European: Here in America, we long for tradition and we long for culture and we long for those things of antiquity. And when we want them, what do we do? We go off to Europe to find them. But here, we have a tradition of 35 years of age, which probably could have gone to 70 years of age - if it was carefully tended, if it was well written, if it addressed stories people wanted to hear. I personally look upon the soap opera as a potential art form, and you could be looking at a tradition here that had spanned half a century, or three-quarters of a century, or even a century, dare one imagine. So you have a choice: Do you come in and knock the buildings down to build a brand new building, or do you come in to an old building that is clearly very well built, very well established, and fix it up? It would seem to me a better choice, speaking as a European, to fix it up. To keep it.

WYNDHAM: Instead, they're getting rid of a cast that has become a family to the viewers. They all say that again and again.

KEATING: That's true. Tonight (for the CNU performance) you'll see three generations out here. There'll be a granny, there'll be a mum and there'll be a daughter. And that might be the one hour a week they all get together - to watch "Another World." So it's one of those few events on television where a family can actually draw together to share something.

WYNDHAM: And, as we've seen, families that have been split by miles because someone's gotten transferred - grandmother is in one part of the country and daughter is in another with granddaughter, and maybe another daughter is somewhere else. But they have that one thing that draws them all together. That was their family tradition. That's what soaps have become over the years. And when you have a 35-year-old soap, that's an awful lot of families that we're serving in a society that's very fractured right now. So there was a sense of continuity for a lot of viewers who have lost family members, or whose families are too far away - it's a link they still have. That's what's sad about it. That's the legacy that is left for the fans - the responsibility to take back the airwaves and to insist that they get served by the entities that are producing and putting on television.

DP: As an actor, you must become very close to a character whom you play five days a week, 52 weeks a year. Victoria, for 28 years, Rachel has walked in your shoes and spoken in your voice. What happens to her when the end of June rolls around?

WYNDHAM: That's when she'll go back into the trunk.

DP: And yet, I have to think she doesn't just go into a trunk. In some sense, she's still going to be doing something - it just won't be on TV anymore.

WYNDHAM: (Laughing) What a nice way to think of it!

KEATING: That's exactly why they brought me back. It's exactly that. They fired me unceremoniously a year ago as part of the dismantling of the show. But the new producer - bless him - asked me to come back in for the last week to do exactly what you just said. To connect up with Rachel so it's Carl and Rachel and the kids and the family, and they will go off into the wild blue yonder. And if you'd care to imagine them at some future date, it will be as a whole, as a unit.

WYNDHAM: So that it's ongoing, even if it's not seen. That's what happens to Rachel for the fans. But for me, as an actress? She goes back into the trunk. We've served each other well, but it's time for her to rest.